Brogramming

[Azrael]

Yes, that would be quite clever if it didn't butcher context so thoroughly. So let's review:

I was unaware of this trope ... but as far as sexism is concerned, I have never seen anything suggesting that there is more institutional sexism than in other industries.

Sexism in STEM fields has been discussed at length in this thread. Claiming on page 3 of a discussion that you've been involved with that you're never heard of it before is a bit baffling.

[AdmiralGreene]

You have to consider the difficulty of being sexist in today's world and getting away with it.

Like that article that omgryebread linked us too a while back, when that speaker made those rude sexist comments, people tweeted about it and what-not, they called him on it. When that start up company had 'friendly female staff members' (paraphrasing here) as one of the benefits for an event, they got called out about it, other companies pulled support, their reputation was damaged. They stopped the event and sent out an apology, hoping to regain face. Companies have strict anti-racism and anti-sexism rules nowadays to make sure that their employees don't piss off someone and have them tweet about it, damaging the company's reputation.

Sure, like Kestrel said, some people might not realize that they're being sexist with the comments they make, but if you politely talk to them about it, hopefully they'll stop, or be more considerate. If not, then you can bring it up with human relations, or your boss, and they'll probably put an end to it. Companies are not going to risk having a disgruntled employee spread the word about how that company doesn't stop sexism, especially when a single angry employee can use social media to bring that company under the public eye.

So yes, while brogramming may be a growing subset of people in the CS world, I personally don't think a company would be willing to hire them (or keep them employed, rather) if they're not able to keep their partying/potentially sexist ways in check.

[sam_i_am]

Yes, that would be quite clever if it didn't butcher context so thoroughly. So let's review:

I was unaware of this trope ... but as far as sexism is concerned, I have never seen anything suggesting that there is more institutional sexism than in other industries.

Sexism in STEM fields has been discussed at length in this thread. Claiming on page 3 of a discussion that you've been involved with that you're never heard of it before is a bit baffling.

Here's an article about a sexually harassed janitor And it is now in this thread. Does this now officially make Janitorial an overly sexist industry?

[Azrael]

No, but now if someone were to claim that they'd never heard of sexism in the janitorial field they would look rather silly.

[AdmiralGreene]

Yes, that would be quite clever if it didn't butcher context so thoroughly. So let's review:

I was unaware of this trope ... but as far as sexism is concerned, I have never seen anything suggesting that there is more institutional sexism than in other industries.

Sexism in STEM fields has been discussed at length in this thread. Claiming on page 3 of a discussion that you've been involved with that you're never heard of it before is a bit baffling.

Here's an article about a sexually harassed janitor And it is now in this thread. Does this now officially make Janitorial an overly sexist industry?

I think you two are misunderstanding each other.
Azrael, I think, believes you're saying that you hadn't heard about sexism in STEM fields, despite being in a thread about it, until about the 3rd page.

What you (sam) mean, I think, was that until this thread brought up the topic of sexism in STEM fields, you hadn't realized it was a major problem, and that you haven't witnessed any examples of sexism in the STEM fields before.

Of course you two might be understanding each other perfectly and then I would feel rather silly.

[mosc]

Sorry for not directly replying to anyone here. I did read this thread.

I find the culture of programming/engineering not particularly sexist but it can seem that way. I think young boys typically get much deeper into the patron methologies of star wars, star trek, internet memes, etc than young girls. I've seen young women react as victims of sexism when a male nerd is upset about them not realizing an RG-88 reference. Another contributing factor is the average ages involved. Men ages 18-25 are typically fairly close to frat boys, programmers are no different. Programmers as a profession tend to be younger, hence the unrelated correlation. I think both of these factors contribute more than some specific programmer-tied sexism.

[TheAmazingRando]

Programmers as a profession tend to be younger, hence the unrelated correlation.

Do you have a source for that? Most of the programmers I've worked with have been old enough to be my father. The start-up scene seems to be pretty young, but that's hardly the majority of the industry.

[mosc]

Are people arguing that 40+ year old men are acting like frat boys more than average because they are programmers? The stereotype itself is tied to age.

[Jplus]

Overt sexism is hardly ever a problem now of days. The problem is the inadvertent kind that people don't realize if they're not sensitive to it.

I'm in mechanical engineering and my boss and some of the other guys were talking about what they did over the weekend and my boss mentioned that his wife had him repaint the bedroom with 5 different colors of beige paint. Obviously this is slightly humorous and a little overboard. It's an actual story with an actual person - no big deal. However, then they generalized it to all women and how all women were 'crazy' when it came to things like that.

It's not much, it's not really a big deal, but when it happens over and over and over again, you can start to feel a bit marginalized and begin to wonder if your coworkers actually respect you at all. Also, stereotype threat is, in my experience, a very real thing and that kind of inadvertent sexist thing can make it worse.

Obviously this type of thing happens all the time with both men and women, but when you're the only woman in a team of 15, that can feel very isolating.

Good post. While I'm not a woman I know what it can be like to be a (negatively stereotyped) minority, and I totally agree. This is exactly one of the reasons why I prefer well-mixed groups, as I mentioned before.

[mieu]

You have to consider the difficulty of being sexist in today's world and getting away with it.

Like that article that omgryebread linked us too a while back, when that speaker made those rude sexist comments, people tweeted about it and what-not, they called him on it. When that start up company had 'friendly female staff members' (paraphrasing here) as one of the benefits for an event, they got called out about it, other companies pulled support, their reputation was damaged. They stopped the event and sent out an apology, hoping to regain face. Companies have strict anti-racism and anti-sexism rules nowadays to make sure that their employees don't piss off someone and have them tweet about it, damaging the company's reputation.

Sure, like Kestrel said, some people might not realize that they're being sexist with the comments they make, but if you politely talk to them about it, hopefully they'll stop, or be more considerate. If not, then you can bring it up with human relations, or your boss, and they'll probably put an end to it. Companies are not going to risk having a disgruntled employee spread the word about how that company doesn't stop sexism, especially when a single angry employee can use social media to bring that company under the public eye.

So yes, while brogramming may be a growing subset of people in the CS world, I personally don't think a company would be willing to hire them (or keep them employed, rather) if they're not able to keep their partying/potentially sexist ways in check.

After reading the whole thread, this post summed up most what I wanted to say. There may be a glut of sexist managers and associates--the people most likely to impact an employee's work and their perception of their environment--but it'd likely be an exaggeration to say that the 'old boys club' truly permeates most companies, particularly with the vigilance that most company HR departments have over this kind of behavior. Any company that doesn't want to be sued blind has it in their best interest to stamp out this behavior.

Of course, that doesn't change that the behavior and mindset exists and is prevalent, but I'd hardly give it any more special attention than other instances of 'group-isms' wherein homogeneity begets exclusivity and untouchability.

The other point that I wanted to make was that 'brogramming' is pointed out as having originate on the internet and that in itself is telling. No one's going to fire 'Sephiroth1985,' he has nothing to fear from posting inflammatory material. With anonymity comes the casting off of the sheep's clothing most people wear day-to-day. So while I don't think most women in computing need to suddenly fear overt sexism in the workplace (any more than women in other sectors), it's good to acknowledge--as others have in this thread--how sexist views influence what most would consider benign interactions.

[mosc]

I think it will be fun when we have the first president who grew up with facebook and has every detail of his life laid out for all the feast on. Will be fun watching politicians finally have to deal with the fact that they are people and not a set of peer group evaluated sound bites.

Privacy's also becoming an illusion of the past. Our social security numbers, blood type, and resume's might as well show up as pop ups next to our usernames these days. I agree anonymity removes inhibitions and public eyes bring with them restraint and respect.

Bigotry is increasingly seen for what it is and has grown steadily more denounced by society over the past 80 years or so. I don't see that trend slowing down. To me, the topic here is about the connection between young men and an industry and some of the less positive effects of hiring a lot of young men. It's not a reflection on some kind of subculture or overall cultural regression.

[Jplus]

I'm sorry, but I doubt any person who got every detail of their life laid out in the open will become president, ever. First of all because such a person wouldn't be able to compete with anyone with a more covert private life (as there's always something in your private life that somebody will be able to exploit to make you look bad), whom they'll always have to compete with because not every person is exposing their entire life on Facebook (or in fact, using Facebook at all). Secondly because it's a huge risk for the person themself to enter a public function (especially a controversial one like the president of the USA) with all of their details readily available to everyone.

I wonder, you don't seem to be concerned about privacy anyway, do you?

[nitePhyyre]

I'm in mechanical engineering and my boss and some of the other guys were talking about what they did over the weekend and my boss mentioned that his wife had him repaint the bedroom with 5 different colors of beige paint. Obviously this is slightly humorous and a little overboard. It's an actual story with an actual person - no big deal. However, then they generalized it to all women and how all women were 'crazy' when it came to things like that.

But some women are crazy when it comes to thing like that. They literally see more colours than men do. Sure for men those 5 shades of beige are just slightly off from each other, but for nearly half of women, there could literally be hundreds of shades between each of the five.

That's crazy.

[Lucrece]

It's not just Facebook. They could start getting your ip address and at some point mining every post you've made on any site or forum, any image uploads to private albums like photobucket. I doubt any younger generation person would isolate themselves from the internet; so then, when looking for a candidate, we will be looking at people who groomed themselves from early years to parse ANYTHING they post in a society where anything and everything will be offended and demand penance at some point.

[mosc]

I wonder, you don't seem to be concerned about privacy anyway, do you?

I think the next generation will have a very different concept of privacy than we do now. This "my home is my castle" concept where you are royalty within your own property and have complete anonymity for any actions within it's isolation is an outdated concept. We still like to pretend like we're feudal lords. It will pass. Privacy will become not preventing people from knowing things about you and more about the legal requirement of protecting data you know about others. Data storage and the administration of secure data is all over the place in today's world.